“As one that walks a weary road —”
What was it? “And having once turned round—”? And then it went on—
“And turns no more his head
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.”
He found the strain too much. “Mannheim,” he said. “We must get off this road. It’s too obvious. Look at this map. If we take the next turning on the right; it’s an old country road, winding and probably not much used. Certainly you can’t see for miles along it. And it’s in the direction of Forbach. We’ll be on our way to the French frontier. Let’s take it.”
Mannheim nodded his head. They took the turning. It was a roughish road, with trees on each side. David felt unreasoningly as if the fiend had fallen at least several steps behind.
A short while after they had left the main road a powerful black car drove slowly along it, in the direction which they had been going. They saw it from a corner of their road, which had begun to climb. They stood still, behind a hedge, and watched it. They could not tell whether it was in fact looking for them. But it increased their disquiet. “I think,” said Mannheim, “we had better separate there, where the lane divides. We are near the frontier, and one man can get across more easily than two. I will meet you at the Buffet de la Gare, Metz, in three days or four days. Or if not there, I will ask at Harry’s Bar in Paris, and will leave a message. And if not there, and if I can get to London, I will present myself at your flat. Good-bye, my very kind and very generous friend.” He spoke the last words in English, removed his hat, and gripped David’s hand in a firm gasp.
12
Yet they never met.
Three days later, a very dishevelled German, still square and with a rather imperious manner, but exhausted, dirty and hungry, presented himself at the refugees’ relief centre in Metz. He demanded to see the chief of the Bureau, startled him by offering an apparently valid British passport, and startled him still more by recounting briefly the story of David’s mission. After a little hesitation, the chief accepted his story, and went with him to the prefecture of police. How much he told the police is uncertain, but it secured for Mannheim the issue of a permis de séjour, which enabled him to live in France— with the exception of Paris, the north-eastern departments and the frontier departments.
He obeyed this order unprotestingly, until May, 1939, when he gained permission to cross to London. He settled in Croxburn and quietly and carefully observed all the regulations, and in due course was given employment in the chemical research side of a large munitions factory. He was arrested with others in the panicky round-up of 1940, but was released early. He lived a solitary life, renting the top half of a small furnished house. Nobody paid him much attention until Councillor Grayling suddenly denounced him to the police. Two days before the death, a Home Office man had called on him and made a few preliminary enquiries.
The same day as that on which the two had parted—indeed, only four hours later—David had been arrested in a German village. The charge was attempting to cross the frontier illegally and possessing seditious papers. If there were further charges connected with Mannheim, they were not published; but the sentence was five years in a fortress. There was immediate intervention by the British authorities; the German government reduced the sentence to one year, but would do no more.
In June, 1939, David was ceremoniously brought back to Saarbrücken, released, and put across the frontier. He took a train to Metz, and then another to Dijon. Here he fulfilled one of the projects which had occupied him for 12 months in a Nazi jail. He put up at the Hotel des Trois Faisans, and ordered the best dinner that he could conceive. He found that his memory tricked him. He could not construct as good a dinner as once he did. Still, he had eighteen different kinds of hors d’œuvre, with two glasses of manzanilla sherry; a sole cooked with mushrooms and red wine (red wine—there is such a way of cooking it, but this is not the place, nor is it now the time, to discuss it) with a 1924 Bâtard Montrachet; a roast pheasant with a Clos de Vougeot 1929; pancakes with Grand Marnier, flaming; coffee and Armagnac.
His stomach tricked him too. You cannot eat like that after twelve months in prison. He was wretchedly ill in the night, and spent the morning in bed. Only by 12 o’clock was he well enough to ask for a railroad timetable; and then he could not study it.
After some black coffee, he dressed, and examined what had been left in his wallet by the Germans. Nothing had been taken: not even his cryptic notes of the cases he cited to Mannheim. There was even the list of figures, the first and most puzzling of the Goltz documents, which he had failed to solve and had still been carrying around. He laid it down with a sigh and a smile: it reminded him of a much younger, and, he assured himself, much more foolish man.
Then he turned to the railroad time-table again.
Dijon—Laroche-Migennes—Paris (P.L.M), he read.
That was the line. He painfully ran his finger along the columns, and then suddenly a little mysery became clear. There was something familiar about this line:
Laroche-Migennes: 5.25 6.50 7.00 7.45 8.00 8.15 8.25 8.30 8.35 8.45 9.15 10.15 12.00 12.50 13.00 13.10. He checked it up. Yes. The figures were the same as on his slip of paper. Someone had jotted down the times of trains at Laroche-Migennes. That was all. Hours of subtlety had been wasted on trying to decipher it. All it meant was, a man had wanted to catch a train.
David laughed aloud, and wondered if Mannheim got through, and what Preston and Diana were doing. That stirred memories and hopes. He decided to go to Paris that night, and, after a little reasonable enjoyment, on to London.
Less or more expeditiously, that was what he did. He made no effort at all to find Mannheim when he got to London, and had only a perfunctory contact with Preston; Dianna he sought out with more zeal. Prison has a marked effect on a human being, but they are in error who claim that it has a purifying effect. It had given David a more exact knowledge of his wishes with regard to the fair-haired young woman, and a stronger impetus towards securing them. It had dull and coarsened his technique: her first evening at his flat was partly spent in resisting rape. He also talked a little crudely about a month in France.
She escaped from him and sat on the floor, her chin on her knees.
“France,” she said. “Paris.”
“Paris in August?” he said, too quickly assuming consent, and already trying to amend her choice.
“Yes, Paris in August,” she said, looking at him queerly. “You don’t have to offer me France, you know. I’ll …” she hesitated, and turned pink. “I’ll do what you want. Not now, instantly: keep off. But I will, and you don’t have to pay me. But if you want to give me France as a present too …” She looked much less a woman of the world as her sentence trailed away.
For that portion of life which remained for him, David’s most vivid memory was of the next three weeks; his most acute single picture that of a short-haired golden head on a pillow, a white shoulder, and an arm folded beneath the head.
September, 1939, called them back to London: David was one of the earliest casualties of the R.A.F.
“I’m not ashamed he had what he wanted,” said Diana, violently and unprovoked, to her mother.
“Not ashamed!” exclaimed that pale lady. “You’re openly delighted.”
“Yes. I am delighted,” said her daugher, and added: “It’s funny. We never even hunted up that German, and it really was all because of his rescuing him that I did anything.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said her mother.
Chapter VIII
* * *
* EILEEN DOREEN GRANT
A WORKMAN *
* GLADYS GRANT
A WORKMAN *
* HUGH ROLANDSON
THE VICAR *
* A. MANNHEIM
H. J. GRAYLING X
* CPL. GEORGE RANSOM
C.J. F. EVETTS *
* * *
“I’ve got reports now on most of the peopl
e in the Grayling case,” said Inspector Holly. “They don’t take us much further. The strongest motive seems to be that German’s. If we actually knew who he was, I feel I’d be almost certain. If we knew what Grayling was going on when he denounced him, that would probably answer the question. But I can’t find out if Grayling had any reasons, and Inspector Atkins tells me the Home Office are rather worried too. He left no papers except bills and such things, his widow says.
“Grayling was right about Mannheim having, or anyhow using a bicycle; and there is a radio set in the house to which he used to listen. That’s forbidden, and Mannheim has been arrested. He’ll be fined. That’s all there is about that. The serious thing is, of course, Grayling’s charge that this person isn’t Mannheim at all, but a Nazi spy impersonating him. Nobody seems to be able to check on that at all. Mannheim, of course, denies it fiercely. Grayling was quite capable of imagining the story out of spite, at that.”
“Surely,” said the Superintendent, “they can find out a thing like that. Somebody must have vouched for the German when he came here.”
“Yes,” said Holly. “An R.A.F. boy who’s dead now, and a French official who lived in Metz and hasn’t come out of France. It seems, too, that there’s no German refugee here whom they trust who knew the real Mannheim in Germany at all well.”
“He’s a skilled chemist, though, whoever he is, isn’t he?”
“Exactly so, sir.”
“If Grayling had evidence which would prove him to be a Nazi spy, he’d have been shot, I suppose. Certainly the best motive up to date for murder. If a Nazi needs a motive for murder. Knowledge, motive, opportunity.”
“Yes, I know, sir,” replied Holly. “But as yet we’ve no direct evidence. Still, he’s under lock and key, and he at least won’t get away.
“I’ve been enquiring about the other passengers in the carriage, just to complete the list. There was, you remember, a middle-aged lady who had a small girl with her, who had a cold. They sat in the corner farthest away from Mr. Grayling. Well, we found them fairly easily. They live in Whetnow. The lady is a Mrs. Gladys Grant, wife of a small builder, Grant Brothers Ltd. The child is her daughter, Eileen Doreen. The daughter goes to a High School in London, very superior the mother told me, called The Lady Marguerite’s School; and that day the Principal had rung up to say that Eileen did not look well so Mrs. Grant had gone down to town to fetch her home, and true enough she developed flu; but you’ll be glad to know she’s better now. Mrs. Grant says she never heard of Mr. Grayling, and didn’t notice him at all, having other things to think of. And Eileen says she was much too ill to notice anything at all; she just nestled close to Mummy all the way.
“The Grants are a very respectable family, the local men say; and I don’t see any reason to question the story.”
“It’s a relief to find somebody of whom one needn’t be suspicious,” remarked the Superintendent.
Chapter IX
* * *
* EILEEN DOREEN GRANT
A WORKMAN *
* GLADYS GRANT
A WORKMAN *
* HUGH ROLANDSON
THE VICAR *
* A. MANNHEIM
H. J. GRAYLING X
* CPL. GEORGE RANSOM
C.J. F. EVETTS *
* * *
“Hugh,” she said, sleepily, “you’d better go.” She must have forgotten she had already told him once to go, and he was standing outside the bed looking down at her. She flung one arm out of the bed and it fell along the counterpane, drawing down the bedclothes and exposing one white breast, small and unspoilt; if it was not quite such a firm round as it once had been, Hugh Rolandson was not the man to know it. She turned her head towards him, but did not open her eyes. She let herself sink into the pillow, profile outlined against the white, and in a few seconds was deep in the sleep of satisfied exhaustion.
Hugh wrapped the thin silk dressing-gown round his chilling body and watched his lover. I shall never know another moment like this in all my life, he thought. I cannot ever have a sharper happiness or a greater pleasure. I am going to fix every detail in my mind so that for years afterwards the memory shall be as clean and clear as this minute is.
The common consensus of opinion is often right and convention may be a good guide even in unconventionality. Could any place, but Paris have provided so perfect a romance?
There are no good words to explain, to those who do not know it, the keenness of the emotion he was feeling. It is a special thing. He was young; he was romantic; eight hours earlier he had been a virgin. It was six o’clock in the morning, in Paris in the year 1939, in spring, in an hotel on the banks of the Seine. His mistress was a few years older than he, experienced, and undeniably lovely. There was such a concentration of delight that he could scarcely contain it. He had the serenity of full satisfaction and at the same time a consciousness that he was only at the start of the most exciting and pleasurable period of his life. He had had all—much more than all— he had ever hoped for, and yet knew it was only the beginning.
Long bars of pale reddish light from the rising sun flooded into the bedroom from the tall french window. He saw every detail of the room, in the thin light, with the sharp-edged clarity of early morning. He imprinted on his mind the disorder of the narrow room. There were some lilies of the valley, which he had bought the evening before, drooping a little in a glass placed in front of the mirror. There was a pile of feminine clothes, half on and half off a chair, with small silk garments at the top. Even an unfinished quarter tumbler of brandy on a small table was important to him; he fixed its position in his mind. Underneath the heavy scent of the flowers was a sharp smell of alcohol. He walked to the long window and looked out. The street was empty in the weak sun; he stood for several minutes and watched the river run smooth and silent beyond the parapet, looking through the range of tall, slender, closely set trees, already bursting into leaf. This was Paris; here Renata had been his lover.
He turned round to look at her again. Brown, short hair on the pillow, finely traced features, eyes closed but with shadows beneath them; arm, shoulder, breast. Still, but breathing gently and quietly. He felt a sudden rush of feeling that he could not analyse, a constriction as if he was going to cry.
He waited for the crisis to pass, and when it had, deliberately remembered the night, passing from the clear light to the warm darkness. With no passion left, he recalled carefully every detail; and the blood rushed to his face again. Earlier in the evening, touched by his devotion and remembering her own past, she had said to him: “You make me feel second-hand.” He had not understood her; he was not capable, at the moment, of comprehending anything that seemed to suggest a criticism of her. It had only underlined his own feeling of yokellish clumsiness and inexpertness, and the greatness of her condescension. He stood at the door a minute before he slipped away to his room, and again recorded to himself that he did not deserve what he had received.
Neither later that day, nor afterwards, did Renata show if her emotions were equally stirred. She was as graceful as a cat, and she was as secretive. She gave him plenty of evidences of affection, but no signs that she had been shaken off her balance. Yet she had taken a very great risk. Her husband, the Councillor, was jealous and morose; and to go to Paris for a long week-end of adultery was at the least rash. The alibi she had constructed for herself might easily collapse. Once before she had taken a much less risk; and before her marriage she had made one experiment. This was more serious.
But if she was worried she did not show it.
It was a Saturday morning on which Hugh had watched the sun rise. They spent the day at Versailles; because it was the cheapest way they went by the State railway. The carriage was packed and Renata—he was beginning to learn to call her Renée—sat on a folding seat at the end of the carriage, near to the unclosed and uncloseable door. The railway runs through narrow, bush or tree-covered cuttings. Hugh silently watched her sitting there, motionless and calm, the green leaves raci
ng past her head. When they came near the station, she rose, smoothed her dress, and called him by lifting her eyebrows. He came as swiftly and adoringly as a dog.
As there has not been, for two hundred years, any town to equal Paris for what the journalists call a week-end of love, so there has never been a park for lovers to equal Versailles. There are no fountains to equal that astonishing battery when it plays; no trees like the monster quincunxes that Louis planted; no ornamental gardens like Marie Antoinette’s playground. The long vista of squared waters seen from the Palace has been imitated from Leningrad to Washington; but this is the original.
They walked away from the Palace, down the great steps and past the first of the great rectangles of water. They turned off among the huge trees, among the partly overgrown and wholly overshadowed gravel walks and perennial green hedges, dark and a little damp after the brilliant warmth of the sunlight. Soon they came to a dusty, white side-road, with a waiting line of horsecabs in the sun and shabby cabmen, a kiosk, and large notice boards containing Regulations for Hippomobile Vehicles. They stood in the sun; and laughed at the notice; and refused solicitations to ride in a hippomobile vehicle.
After a minute or two they turned and went to the Petit Trianon. Renata stopped on one of the bridges in the Queen’s play-village and looked at the thickly struggling mass of fish in the stream. “Those are carp,” said Hugh, remembering the guide book. “They’re very old. They saw the Revolution. Marie Antoinette stocked the stream. Or perhaps they’re only the descendants,” he corrected uneasily.
Somebody at the Door Page 14
